Here is the work done today, which was preparing the arms before shaping. Critical work, and the day went well. This was mainly due to working methodically. Looking back it all seemed so logical and straightforward, but it didn't feel this way beforehand.
The first task was to bandsaw all the blocks of wood into shape, having outlined the parts with the templates.
Lining up the arm parts for two chairs, three for each ...
At first I thought I would clamp them together and balance the lot on top of each chair ... no, that would be silly! The chairs were turned upside down on the arms ...
This revealed that the spread of the arms was a little too wide. The arm supports need to be centred on the arm rests ...
Before adjusting this, the next stage needed to be to cut the arm supports to length. To do this, first the template for the arm elevation was positioned ...
... and then a template was made to position this ...
This allowed all the arms supports to be marked on both sides ..
.. and marked with blue tape ...
The excess is sawn away ...
The template also enables the accuracy of the saw cuts to be checked, and for square. This will need to be fine tuned later, but good for now ...
The underside of the arms are marked so the positions on each will be the same, and the overhang at the rear was roughly calculated. Again, this will be adjusted after the arms parts are joined.
Now the top rail can be positioned for sizing ..
It is marked for sawing ...
Aligned on the slider ...
All the ends of the arms are squared this way, however the saw has a maximum cut height of 75mm and these parts are 90mm. This leaves 15mm to saw away with a hand saw, and then clean up with a block plane. This clean up is important as it is also jointing for the parts to fit together gap-free ...
The arm parts are ready to fit together ...
And all done for the day ...
Regards from Perth
Derek